Danger: America Is Losing Its Edge In Innovation

I’ve visited more than 100 countries in the past several years, meeting people from all walks of life, from impoverished children in India to heads of state. Almost every adult I’ve talked with in these countries shares a belief that the path to success is paved with science and engineering.

In fact, scientists and engineers are celebrities in most countries. They’re not seen as geeks or misfits, as they too often are in the U.S., but rather as society’s leaders and innovators. In China, eight of the top nine political posts are held by engineers. In the U.S., almost no engineers or scientists are engaged in high-level politics, and there is a virtual absence of engineers in our public policy debates.

Why does this matter? Because if American students have a negative impression – or no impression at all – of science and engineering, then they’re hardly likely to choose them as professions. Already, 70% of engineers with PhD’s who graduate from U.S. universities are foreign-born. Increasingly, these talented individuals are not staying in the U.S – instead, they’re returning home, where they find greater opportunities.

Part of the problem is the lack of priority U.S. parents place on core education. But there are also problems inherent in our public education system. We simply don’t have enough qualified math and science teachers. Many of those teaching math and science have never taken a university-level course in those subjects.

I’ve always wanted to be a teacher; in fact, I took early retirement from my job in the aerospace industry to pursue a career in education. But I was deemed unqualified to teach 8th-grade math in any school in my state. Ironically, I was welcomed to the faculty at Princeton University, where the student newspaper ranked my course as one of 10 that every undergraduate should take.

In a global, knowledge-driven economy there is a direct correlation between engineering education and innovation. Our success or failure as a nation will be measured by how well we do with the innovation agenda, and by how well we can advance medical research, create game-changing devices and improve the world.

I continue to be active in organizations like the IEEE to help raise the profile of the engineering community and ensure that our voice is heard in key public policy decisions. That’s also why I am passionate about the way engineering should be taught as a profession – not as a collection of technical knowledge, but as a diverse educational experience that produces broad thinkers who appreciate the critical links between technology and society.

Here we are in a flattening world, where innovation is the key to success, and we are failing to give our young people the tools they need to compete. Many countries are doing a much better job. Ireland, despite a devastated economy, just announced it will increase spending on basic research. Russia is building an “innovation city” outside of Moscow. Saudi Arabia has a new university for science and engineering with a staggering $10 billion endowment. (It took MIT 142 years to reach that level.) China is creating new technology universities literally by the dozens.

These nations and many others have rightly concluded that the way to win in the world economy is by doing a better job of educating and innovating. And America? We’re losing our edge. Innovation is something we’ve always been good at. Until now, we’ve been the undisputed leaders when it comes to finding new ideas through basic research, translating those ideas into products through world-class engineering, and getting to market first through aggressive entrepreneurship.

That’s how we rose to prominence. And that’s where we’re falling behind now. The statistics tell the story.

U.S. consumers spend significantly more on potato chips than the U.S. government devotes to energy R&D.

In 2009, for the first time, over half of U.S. patents were awarded to non-U.S. companies.

China has replaced the U.S. as the world’s number one high-technology exporter.

Between 1996 and 1999, 157 new drugs were approved in the U.S. Ten years later, that number had dropped to 74.

The World Economic Forum ranks the U.S. #48 in quality of math and science education.

Innovation is the key to survival in an increasingly global economy. Today we’re living off the investments we made over the past 25 years. We’ve been eating our seed corn. And we’re seeing an accelerating erosion of our ability to compete. Charles Darwin observed that it is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but rather the one most adaptable to change.

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1) An education is an investment in the future. An investment in a technical degree is a poor investment. It is a lot of really hard work (I also have a Ph.D., chemistry, UCLA) and the pay and upward mobility are limited. Invest the same time, energy, and money in an MBA, JD, or MD and the monetary rewards will be much greater. My own son got a BS in Chemical Engineering and earned more right out of college than I did ten years after graduation. The math is pretty simple and kids can do it.

2) At the end of the day, what difference does it make if the US is no longer the innovation leader? The technology that actually makes it to the market place will be manufactured overseas. Patents and innovation mean nothing if they produce no economic benefit to the nation as whole.

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It isn’t true that younger talent can be had for a ‘fraction of the cost’ unless the fraction is 90% or so. Tech salaries are very flat. There is limited financial gain in hiring younger, at least based on salary.

Why it has been the practice to hire only younger people in tech is a bit of a mystery. There may be a perception that younger people are more up to date in tech, but this has not been reality in my own esperience.

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